Green Leaf of Righteous Wealth
Am 8:4-7; 1 Tim 2:1-8; Lk 16:1-13 (25/ C)
“Christians should handle the affairs of
temporal life with an eye toward eternal life.”
The relation of the steward to the rich man in
today’s Gospel calls for application to our relationship with God. It is to be
seen in the use of our talents of stewardship entrusted by God. The term “steward”
is applied here to indicate this relation. Each of us is endowed with a charge
of God’s property. That is our own constitution—physical, mental, moral—is a
trust. All our endowments—talents, money, relationships, social positions are properties
of which we are farmers. If we think that we can do as we like with them, it
would be false to our creator and false to ourselves. God has given us the
power of dominance in the right way (Ps 8:4) to govern them. Do we realize this,
or do we sadly forget the fact of stewardship? Are we not, in many ways,
changing the tenant into the master, the steward into the owner?
Christian stewardship is the administration of the
Christian life. When we are depressed about the trade of something, of hard,
dull times, the prophecy of the Prophet Haggai is reflected, “Give careful
thought to your ways. You have planted much, but harvested
little. You eat but never have enough. You drink but never have your
fill. You put on clothes but are not warm. You earn wages, only to
put them in a purse with holes in it” (Hag
1:5-6). Augustine of Hippo says, “Even though you possess plenty, you are still
poor. You abound in temporal possessions, but you need things eternal” (Sermon
56, 9). Regarding Christian objects, what should be the steward’s prudence in
the conduct of benevolent enterprises? Competition is healthy in certain
limited areas. Diffuse causes not only ill health: it might become a scandal.
Pope Leo XIV, in a recent interview with a Catholic News
site, said that the polarization in society is being driven in part by a “wider
gap between the income levels of the working class and the money that the wealthiest
receive”. Mammon is meant to be an instrument for the accomplishment of our
stewardship. The things of this world are the mammon of unrighteousness, or the
false mammon. Christ insists we cannot serve both (Lk 16: 13). God requires us to
spend mammon on the needy while the world demands spending on one’s own lusts. It
is impossible to reconcile their services. The only faithfulness to the one is
to break with the other. Do we need to make ourselves of the mammon of
unrighteousness, as the steward with his lord’s goods made his lord’s tenants
his friends to inherit the life of comfort?
Luke concludes the parable of Jesus with a lesson that
stands as a question: Who is the master in charge of our lives? Our “master” is
that which governs our thought-life, shapes our ideals, and controls the
desires of the heart and the values we choose to live by. We, as farmers, need
to cultivate Christ’s spirit-oriented values and, as stewards, surrender them
on his return when we meet him at our resurrection. Our money, time, and
possessions are precious resources and gifts from God. Those who trust in their
riches will fall, but the righteous will thrive like a green leaf (Pro 11:28). We
can guard them jealously for ourselves alone or allow them for the benefit of the
needy in his kingdom.
“Those who can be trusted in small things
can also be trusted in great things.”
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